Description

‘Playful, bold, tender . . . in Glyph we see a major British writer answering the call of the day’ Guardian

Ghosts don’t exist.
They don’t. End of.
Story, however.
It is haunting.
Everything tells it.

It all starts when Petra and her little sister Patch hear a horrifying story from the past and find themselves making up a ghost.
Is it imaginary? Is it real?

Then it all starts again thirty years later when Petra, now estranged from Patch, finds a phantom horse kicking the furniture to pieces in her bedroom.
What to do? She phones her sister.

In a chiaroscuro dance through our increasingly antagonistic era, Glyph asks if we’re attending to the history that’s made us and to the history we’re making. A funny, warm and clear-eyed take on where we are now, Glyph is about what our imaginations are for and how, in a broken, brutal and divided time, we rekindle care, solidarity, resistance and openness.

This anti-war novel, Ali Smith’s most soulful, playful and vital yet, is a work of lightness that goes deep to counter the forces currently flattening the modern world.

A standalone novel, it’s family to Gliff (2024).

Publisher Review

Ali Smith is one of our greatest living novelists, the Virginia Woolf of our times * Observer * Few writers today can make a more compelling claim to singularity of innovation and sustained brilliance * Times Literary Supplement * One of the most intelligent, inventive, downright impressive writers working anywhere in the world today * The Scotsman * Ali Smith takes risks. She jumps from high places and lands on her feet — Jackie Kay * Scotland on Sunday *